December 5, 2014

We've just released a new version on Steam that comes with a lot of new goodies.

First off we've expanded the island of San Hermanos and add 3 new sectors (2 visble and one underground). With the new sectors we have also added a new quest that has a a "wild" twist and added lighthouses that negate deployment costs in the current and adjecent sector if you control it.

Attachments have also been added to this version, so now you can add up to 10 different attachment and just to name a few: Sniper Scope, Nightvision Scope, Reflector Sight, Supressor and Bipod.

We've also updated the modding menu in the game, so it's now hooked up to Steam Workshop properly and you can easily manage your mods.

Lastly, We localized the game to Polish and we've added a Soviet Weapon pack that includes the following weapons:

PPSH-41

Skorpion vz.61

Blyskawica

RPK

Makarov

AS VAL

VSS silent sniper rifle

Degtyarev DP 28

1.1.0

Features

New free "DLC": New sectors and questline

Lighthouses added to San Hermanos (controlling them removes deploy cost in adjacent sectors)

Added Polish L10N

Weapon attachments

Modding menu

Soviet weapon pack

Added stealth icon

Bugfixes

Inventory fixes

Stealth fixes

Weapon stats display fixes, so now it uses proper calculations of the modifiers

Digital Deluxe Edition

About This Game

Jagged Alliance is back – and it is all about the unique mix of turn based tactics, fierce battles, squad management and crazy mercenary personalities.

It is 1988 on the Caribbean island group of San Hermanos. A corrupt leader has the islands in his grasp ... yet a group of rebels fights for democratic values and freedom. However, once the head of the rebels is arrested, the insurgents quickly dissolve. Arriving on the island, the player’s mission is to help the rebellion before things take a turn for the worse.

Take control of your own band of mercenaries, lead them into battle and manage your resources wisely. Fight back for freedom, sector by sector, turn by turn. Like the original Jagged Alliance series, Jagged Alliance Flashback gives you the choice to use your preferred tactics and build your squad around it – rush in with heavy armed troops or take the high road of distance shots and sniping.

More features and content will be added on a regular basis, and together with your feedback and support we will shape this game to be the best Jagged Alliance game yet! Please feel free to give us your comments, your thoughts and your recommendations. We listen to every one of you.

I had a bad feeling about the game when I watched the videos of the Alpha version, then I thought, well the game was still pretty far from finish maybe things would turn out to be better (and it came out yesterday).

Combat:Despite the plastic 3D-models and UI designed by some "Hello world!" level programmer, the tactical part of the game is not there at all. It plays like a cheap clone of XCOM with that half-shield/full-shield mark when you take cover but note that you can't do any smart shooting behind an object. The object just block both line of fire and line of sight of yours and enemies'. The whole combat part is to play the "move from a cover to another cover" thing. Enemy duck down, you crawl down, stand up, move a bit, duck down, blah blah blah. I cleared the 1st town with only my IMP merc and not got shot once (default difficulty). I would be grinded to meat pieces if it's a similar situation in JA2.

One funny thing is that enemies tends to rush to your face and not doing anything, I assume they don't plan their AP very well? Remember how you get beaten up by the melee/sprayer enemies in JA2? It's not likely to happen in this game unless you are very very reckless and do nothing when enemies come to you. After you hit them, they sometimes stand in the open ground and do not move. Sometimes they run back and forth a bit. Sometimes it says "Panic" and the wounded enemy run to some random directions. So they behaved like Kamikaze-commandos then suddenly became cowards? Do they have a political commissar kicking their ♥♥♥ but has a limited area of effects?

Sometimes I just rush with all team members when there are few enemies left (remember how cautious you were when getting the last rats in every battle in JA2?), because getting hit is not that lethal at all, since you heal even faster than Wolverine in X-Men. Btw: Sometimes you can have >100% chance of hit. How is that possible? During battles, sometimes when you change the direction your merc is facing, you quit the combat mode, and it says ENEMY CONTACT LOST. It's really confusing.

Enemy will attack the land you occupied very quickly. Once they sent the troops and headed to my land, so I send my team to chase after them. They took down the millitias I trained, I felt so bad about it and I wanted to avenge them. There were at least 10 enemies in their troops so I was preparing for a bad fight. Then, after they took the last pieces of my land, they vanished from the map!!! I felt like a dog chasing a vanishing sausage.

There were some people on the Steam community posting posts to tell how they like the combat and how thrilling it is. I did give the game a second try due to those positive comments, I tried to enjoy the combat, but I failed. I also saw some posts regarding the postive comments of the combat:

[Quoted from Steam Community]

Originally posted by Keyboard Cowboy:..It sounds like you guys are playing a completely different game than I am... o.OOhh well... :o

Originally posted by SoulsandBlood:..Seems like we are playing a different version.My AI is as dumb as dirt.

[/quoted from steam community]

Maybe I got a wrong link of the download of the game, too?

Scripts & story:You start with receiving some mysterious radio distress from someone and you must kill some evil Prince who is rich and bad. The whole intro feels pale and vague. The scripts of the game were written by some guys who thinks he/she is humorous but there were no humor at all. It doesn't stop mentionning Lynx banging Buzz, or Ivan drinking vodka while loading the game, trying desperately to hook up with old fans of JA series. Not a nice trying I'd say. Even in the very beginning of the game, in the IMP text, I saw they spelled "rathar than" as "rather then". Ye, English is not my 1st language either.

I tried throwing grenades to various things, including wooden barrels, wooden fences, walls, sofas, tires, rocks, sandbags, cows and pigs.... and nothing got destroyed. The only thing I destroyed with grenades is a huge sun umbrella, it looks like the one in the main title screen.

Other things:There are lots of animals roaming around on the island. I mean LOTS of, cow, sheeps, pigs, chickens, birds..it feels like an island version of Mongolia. Why do people fight when they are so rich? Don't the evil Prince have feasts with his pawns? Are they all vegans? I tried to kill the cows in the game, but found out that you can't. Even grenade can't kill a pig or a chicken. Not to mention that I want to boost up my strength by punching them! However, you can use the bodies of cows or pigs as cover! Try to lean your body on a pig in real life, please. And don't do it in front of your neighbours.

You can stand in fires and not get burnt.

You can't loot the civillian houses, because in 1988 people were as poor as ♥♥♥♥, there are nothing in their houses. Only in one or two houses out of 20 you can find a case containing some loots. Most NPCs are filled with random taglines, like "Hola" "Can I touch you?". Why the heck you want to touch me?? Also there are side missions like "Please sleep with my wife so I can work". Hmmm, the island dwellers are really friendly aren't they? One thing is really annoying, you must face the directions of the NPCs to see them. No, standing around them is not enough. The town people duck down when you fight your enemies and refuse to talk to you. They don't really need to, because they are as invincible as the animals, but you can't use their bodies as covers.

Mercs:I hired Buzz and she has less than 10 taglines, and she sounded like a buffalo with a cold. Then I hired Lynx, thought maybe he would spice things up a bit. But nothing happens. Where is the banging part they mentioned before?? They don't even talk to each other! Later I learned that merc Vicky Waters from JA&JA2 is a farmer's daughter. Is that Fallout-looking wrecked car shell in the northern farm supposed to be a 1964 Chevy? It doesn't look like one. Later I saw the Danish girl Monica "Buns" Sondergaard, yes the annoying kindergarten teacher (but I like her) being some local gangster's body guard. I thought she was 12 years old in 1988?

Btw: when you hire someone by calling them, they appear in front of you right after. Are they paratroopers already? Or are they waiting on some satelite and got beamed down to you?

When you talk to recruit-able NPCs, you can ask telephone numbers so you can recruit them later. Then the NPCs vanish in front of you!!! What the heck is that? I want to master that skill too, so I can FLASH to the BACK of the evil Princes and a**l them with the tampon-looking bandage!

On the Steam community people say things like, oh they are a small studio and they lacked money. You know, they missed the cheapeast things to add in this game, the highest value for money things in this game --- All the interesting details that exist in JA2, and they somehow promised to create them in this game.

I donated 25USD because it lit up my hope to see a better new JA game. I'm going back to JA2 now.

Just gave up playing it. It looks like JA:Online. Not even close to JA2, or it's successor 1.13 mod. Do you even know what makes JA2 a good game? Like micromanagement, Inventory management, fully detailed weapon customisation, more simulation aspects. And what is that? Just an JA:Online (cover-marks ("shields") even haven't been changed) with great advetrisment. Tactics? Just saw three opponents gathered behind same log and started shootng at my guy, while he was at the opposite side of a log, right behind it... Stealth? Forget about it, since cover-logic haven't even been implemented, as i told you already. When i saw all this, i recognised, that noone will ever make something even close to JA2, since noone can into community forums and community-requested features. "Why should i spend my prescious time on reading this BearPit forum, which have brought JA2WF, JA2UB, JA2 1.13, AIMNAS and all that stuff to this world, if i can grab my kickstarter money and make something like JA:O?" This game became my biggest disappointment of this year. Just give this game to community, make extended API for modders and extend modding support. You have failed fans of the JA, just let them fix your monster atleast, since you aren't able to do that by yourself.

This is a piece of crap that brings shame to Jagged Alliance series. If you're a fan of any type of tactical turn-based games - avoid it!

Long one:

Yeah, i'm a long time fan of Jagged Alliance games like many others around the world. I don't regret that i was a backer during KS campaign, it was my choice and i was fully conscious about what i was doing. I only regret the final result of this project.

I really don't want to write a book about gameplay, so i will focus on advantages and disadavtages of this game. Here we go:

Pros:

- Graphics, you can love it or hate it, but i think that graphical style that was taken was a good choice.

- Fighting, well, sometimes fight is annoying, but sometimes it can be fun.

- Music, not bad.

- The game is clearly described, you can easily sense what is it all about

Cons:

- Graphics, style is ok, but there are too little details and 3D characters have jest few polygons.

- Sound, i don't mind soundtrack, but sometimes sounds in the inventory are too loud and overdriven.

- Just one save slot!

- Very small quantity of stuff thrown around, so there is no sense in wandering on a map, there are only few containers in which you can find some loot.

- Can't open/close the doors!

- There are no second floors, and you can't go on the roofs!

- There is no possibility to modify weapons!

- Bugged and totally unrealistic weapons. There is no such thing like UZI in .45 caliber, there is no such thing like Thompson with 7, 10, or 15-round clip. Sometimes I had action points, proper ammo and just can't reload the weapon.

- Can't see bloody thing during the rain/storm.

- Pathfinding is totally broken. You can click on a single and simple part of the ground and some of your merc will choose the most complicated and longest possible way to get there (and some of them will probably stay just where they are).

- User interface is not well designed, you can easily click on a random place and accidentally move your merc.

- AI, there are no sophisticated tactics that enemies can use, They just get closer and closer, one by one. Forget about flanking and such things.

- Useless militia, you train them, they lose and so on... There is no possibility to enter combat when your militia squad is fighting.

- Strange mechanics, aim shot is useless and sometimes you can embark into weird "never-ending" shootout. It looks like this: the distance between your merc and the enemy is about two squares, you have rather high hit probability and you just can't shot him no matter what. Another thing: 103, 105% hit probability? What is it? Are devs kidding us?

- No noticeable mercs relationships, They're just callous puppets.

- You can use cow as a cover, the cow is...armoured...

- There is no, absolutely no optimalization!

- What the hell "interrupt" button is doing in UI? Interrupt action should act automatically when given character have enough action points!

- Illegible table of guns characteristic.

- There is a shop of course (in text, not graphical form!). You can buy, but you can't sell your own stuff!

- Camera angles are uncomfortable

...Jesus, i have enough, there are probably quite a few things that i could mention, but this list annoyed me enough. As You see, this game has been practically deprived of the most needed functions. I don't really see sense in existing of JA-ish game which is so neutered. Just look at Silent Storm and even 7.62, or Back in Action. These games have some flaws, but this is nothing comparing to Flashback. This game is so bad that i don't see any potential in it and any chance to upgrage the main problems of it.

People from Full Control said something like this: "KS campaign succeeded with minimum amount of money needed to create Flashback project, and that's why fans and backers will receive minimum amount of content". Pure and simple, 368k $ was practically the lowest amount of money necessary to achieve lowest stretch goals and start developing of this game. This is the point where Full Control made a huge mistake, they should never start developing this game with such a low budget. Some would say: "but minimum budget could not be lower due to low interest in community. If the amount was higher , this game would never have been created!". Exactly! Jagged Alliance: Flashback should not exist! This is so weak and embarrassing piece of crap that only brings shame to Jagged Alliance brand.

Maybe if FC had more manpower, capabilities, experience, consistent vision and skills to make things right, then they might have a chance to make a really decent game... But they hadn't and they were overwhelmed by the task which they have chosen, They had to feed their families and stay aflout, we received a game that is poor in almost every aspect. Was it worth it? I don't think so...

I believe that time will come and we will finally receive worthy successor of JA: 2. It doesn't matter how long i will wait, real mercs never die!;-)

First, let me say that I LOVE the original Jagged Alliance games (JA, Deadly Games, and JA2). That said, this game is a huge disappointment.

Though they have progressed towards making a JA game, they have fallen FAR SHORT:

-No world interaction. You can't open doors, crates, climb onto roofs, or blow holes in walls.

-The UI feels a lot worse than those of yester-year. How is this even possible? It seems incomplete and clunky, making even simple tasks awkward.

-Character inventory is shallow. Though they have added a "squad inventory", lack of items in the world and the randomness of enemy drops makes this a collection of junk rather than an armory.

-In game engine is also clunky. The game looks out-dated (JAZZ: Hired Guns anyone?) and plays poorly, with AI taking far too long to execute turns. When a 2D game from 19 years ago looks more appealing, you might have failed.

-Combat is lacking. Enemies make poor decisions and don't try to flank, rushing at you and using the closest cover once in range. Line of sight is extremely limited, making some scenarios (firing at a diagonal around the box right in front of you) a case of leaving cover to shoot at enemies who will miss you from 6 feet away. It's honestly comical.

-Lack of video options. You can change "bulk" settings, but have to direct control over AA, V-Synch, texture quality, etc. This seems both lazy and cheap in this day and age.

-Sound design is weak. Most sounds and music are pulled from JA2. Again, this seems less of an homage and just a matter of frugality.

-Map size is small. This might just be an initial mis-giving, but there just isn't much there once you get into a sector. No hidden items, no containers, limited NPCs... Bland and empty.

Give this one a wide berth until they ACTUALLY finish it. As it is now, it has fewer features than that abortive JA: Online crap. Play JA2, Xenonauts, XCOM, or even the UFO series instead.

Additionally:

-Cover is NOT implemented well, with enemies shooting you without you being able to shoot back; in some cases, they even shoot you THROUGH walls.

-Militia is a joke. You can't fight alongside them. It's a cheaper version of the automated combat from JA2, but far simpler and with a graphic-less UI (at least JA2 had portraits), and the enemy is CONSTANTLY roaming in larger bands than you can train in 2 days time. I guess this makes up for the TINY map, as you need to re-conquer sectors.

-Inventory is poor, with no attachments and most enemies dropping ZERO items, despite shooting you from extreme range with assault rifles.

-Combat is a complete joke, with enemies being unaffected by traumatic gunshot and grenade wounds. Occasionally, they might "panic", but it's a die-roll and not something that makes sense. There is no suppression system, and the AP costs are so ridiculous that you will mostly be using snap shot and not moving once combat begins. The enemy, of course, seems to have a lot more AP than you, popping off three shots after moving when you can barely manage 2.

-Wound system, continued from above, does not remove APs from injured parties, but is based on hit location, with legs removing AP, head reducing next-shot to-hit, and body just causing damage. I was not impressed when an unarmored soldier took a .50 HP to the chest and proceeded to run up to me and punch me. STUPID.

-CTDs. On enemy turns, the game likes to crash (look for the tell-tale change of cursor and lack of animations). This is somewhat reminiscent of JA2 1.08, so I guess they were somewhat faithful? Try windowed (resolution hit) and you can cut back on the level of incidence. SESO, otherwise.

This was a regrettable waste of money AT THIS TIME. Luckily, they did much better with Space Hulk, so give them your money for that and HOPE that they don't abandon this one in the mean-time.

Huge disappointment. It looks like good old JA in nice 3D HD, it sounds like good old JA - but it's just extremely empty and lacks lots of features. Targeting and surroundings' hitbox ballistick model is just ridiculous - you never know how to set your agents. There is no advanced wound model - characters are just simple life bars. No weapon customization, dialogues are clicking nonsense (you can click whatever, no choices), no exploration, no civilian movement phase, you can't even open or close doors, etc. etc.

Stay away! (or eventually get for about a dollar, when it's on a steam sale and mods get some features back)

Would I recommend this? My answer is, "Yes with a but, or no with an and..." I give it mixed reviews.

Yes, BUT this isn't really Jagged Alliance. The original did a semi-decent job of making you feel like you were sitting at a laptop in a dark hotel room somewhere anonymous directing mercenaries over satellite - you were their shadowy handler, working quietly to depose a cruel tyrant and liberate the oppressed. This one just drops you in - rather than a mock "laptop" interface where you read the emails of your employer, viderconference, even browse the web to buy guns/flowers to remember your dead, in JA: Flashback, you're just dropped in. No buildup, just "here you go!". It partly fixes this "feel" problem by having your main character be the apparent handler, hiring mercenaries as you go (and said mercenaries appear magically out of nowhere instead of a 24 hour delay where they are choppered in), but I think this loses out to the feel of the original.

The bottom line: The good news is that this appears to be an attempt to recapture the original with 3d graphics and a new plot, with a new combat interface. The bad news is that this game doesn't succeed in the depth of the original (less searchable locations, less apparent subtlety). The WORSE news is that Full Control polled the audience for what they wanted in the game, rather than take on ALL the design work themselves, The rather predictable results are things like a long list of character names such as "Night Eyes" and "Jackie Chen", and a combat interface reminiscent of X-COM: Enemy Unknown, making the game feel somewhat juvenile and unsophisticated.

This game misses the original on several levels. The scale of the maps are somewhat more restricted (larger squares, less of them between buildings), so combat becomes a little more frenetic and "AAAA, please let me roll good numbers!", where chance matters for more than sound tactical planning. Rather than subtly applying camoflage makeup, approaching at night, dropping the roof guard with a silenced SMG and jumping on the roof to drop every guard in the compound with sniper fire (I turned that into a science in JA2), your firefights are more likely to be an attrition brawl where friendlies just stay in cover waiting for the enemy to walk into their guns, and you hope they run out of guys first. While the "cover" indicator is welcome, it only has three states of none, partial and full, and doesn't distinguish between visual cover and hard cover. While JA2 didn't have ANY cover indicator, it was quite possible to lay in what felt like a furrow in the ground, unseen and shielded by a small rock and a clump of weeds. If they fired, you could usually get enough of a fix to return fire, and blind fire was quite a reasonable tactic. JA:F seems to have removed a lot of these subtleties in an effort to make more of a development/engine friendly game, where level building became simpler and playtesting counted for less. A straightforward remake of JA2, keeping completely true to the mechanics/interface of the original with a new plot would almost certainly have required a lot more work that this one appeared to - and I think it shows in the lack of "polish" in JA:F. A straight remake would have been a better game.

Having followed Kickstarters (I was a backer of JA:F) for awhile, I've noticed that this is the second game (that I am aware of) that Full Control has released that has drawn on previous franchises and received markedly mixed reviews (The first was Space Hulk). There exists something in creative work called the "Editor's eye", the judgment and flair, the elan, to know what to put into a game, what to leave out, and how the whole will come together to look as a final product. I suggest Full Control has a lot of soul-searching to do regarding theirs. The game feels unpolished, juvenile, unserious and simplistic, and almost all of these flaws could have been fixed by a harsher editors eye in its design. Good luck, Full Control. I won't back another game again.

I'd like to think that I'm unbiased as I write this feedback (hoping that it will be a fair warning if you are researching the game) ... but I did really love Jagged Alliance 2, and felt it was a game ahead of it's time, full of personality, decision-making and fun.

I've had a BRIEF play of this 'reboot', and I really struggle to find the motivation to spend any more time with it. After an hour or two, I've had enough.

The problem is, it's shallow. I just see so many features missing or glazed over. At least with 'Back in Action', the game had a pretty robust combat system that innovated on the original .. if JaBia had delivered on it's promise to bring over the personality and substance of the original JA2, and bring with it the new combat, it would have been awesome, instead of a disappointment.

Flashback - well, it's even worse, I'm afraid. It has fewer features than JaBia, the combat is dull, the AI is pretty much utterly stupid (sorry, to be specific .. you can be shooting at the AI and it will run past you and stand to it's back with you so you and your buddies can kill it).

It has promise, and I really would be interested to play this game with another 6 months of rich development, but my feeling is that the people making it have exhausted all the upfront kickstarter money, and rather than grow a set of gonads and spend their own time and money perfecting the product - to yield the ultimate financial and reputation rewards of creating a wonderful, memorable game - they just launched early and incomplete.

Animations are absent .. like, taking cover seems to be just .. standing there.. there is no corresponding action from the merc (at least that I can tell??) that they've taken cover.. nor can I see any easily accessible stat/graphic/icon or anything that tells me that they are actually in cover ..

It's just .. weak.

It's a weak, disappointing title, and I have buyers remorse.

I regret buying it, and I actually don't give a flying poo-poo about twenty bucks .. I regret buying it because by doing so I'm supporting an outcome that I find increasingly unacceptable in the gaming world - releasing unpolished, feature incomplete, over-promise-under-deliver titles.

I'd recommend you steer away from this game if you are considering buying it, at least in it's present form as at 25 October 2014.

UPDATE: As at 7 February 2015, I've had a second look and injected some more time into the game (apparently, according to the defenders of the game - some vested modders from "the Bear Pit", you have to have a minimum of 3 hours gameplay to have a valid opinion .... although I can tell if a game sucks pretty much right away, and you'd have to be mental to hack away at something that sucks just to confirm it doesnt suck, right?). Anyway just to update, several months (and a few patches) later, the game is still quite awful .. it's boring, feature incomplete, poor AI, and as they fix other bugs, they apparently create new ones, like all the females for some reason now like to crawl around on their stomachs... if you're thinking about buying this game - think twice - you can get a lot more bang for your gaming buck elsewhere.

Buyers beware, this game is less feature-rich, less entertaining and less professionally-made than it's beloved predecessor, JA2.

It's easy to be critical of series sequels, especially those made by a new company. The fact is that fans of the series were hoping for a new installment in the beloved series which would harken back to the good old days of a stubborn Fidel, broken-language Ivan, cheerfully deadly Scully and mysterious and powerful Magic.

Those characters are present, along with much of the classic cast. The problem is not the characters, but alas, Jagged Alliance is about much more. I played Jagged Alliance upon it's release, and Jagged Alliance 2 years later. Sir-Tech's vision of a modern mercenary group in an XCOM style of gameplay was brilliant, and I didn't even discover XCOM until much later.

Flashback, however, offers none of the strategic delights of roaming a jungle and hiding behind trees, glimpsing enemies for a moment before they fade out and flank you, or sneaking around buildings to approach enemies stealthily and take them out. You move your units in a turn-based manner, you equip them with various weapons and gear you find or purchase in your travels, but that is where the similarities end.

Tactical combat is a joke, with a poorly designed interrupt system which rarely triggers despite having an experienced teamate facing the enemy around a blind corner. ranges are ridiculous, and weapons fall off to a 0% chance to hit at such a short range that early combat takes place within 4 squares by necessity, and marksmen with an 85% score rarely have above a 60% chance to hit a center-body shot even at that range.

The result is a grindy slugfest wherein utilizing good tactics for cover and concealment and positioning and intersecting fields of fire fails to draw out enemy mercenaries into makeshift kill-zones and enable your team to kill them with minor injuries. Perhaps this was intentional, but for me... the tactical advantages gained by good positioning and approach techniques were a big part of the game. Sadly, this is not the only shortcoming Flashback exhibits.

The sectors are largely empty. Gone are the days of finding secret crates stashed back in a corner of a sector, looting it and finding that much-needed lockpick or ammunition of flak vest. Perhaps they have populated some key sectors with these things, but in the four starting areas there's not so much as a single crate to be found - and believe me, I scoured the zones. So while they have filled the zones will all kinds of terrain features to fill up the squares, there is nothing to interact with to make exploring sectors and looting buildings in any way interesting, which was a huge part of the JA series experience.

The UI is clunky and unintuitive, and it fails to offer some of the more interesting dynamic features of JA2 - that is, line of sight cones and rooftop access. The diversity of available weapons - which has no option to raise or lower - simply makes the entire game more difficult, decreasing the likelihood that you will find weapons or ammunition on enemy corpses which match those your party is using. The dialogue screen is almost identical to JA2, which is not a compliment - dialogue was one of JA2's weak points - but falls short of even that in failing to provide more than a very simple and linear dialogue. Where at least JA2 gave certain mood-flavors to your responses, Flashback offers only prewritten script which fails to cover any reasonable range of optional responses.

The English is bad. I realize this is an overseas company who bought the IP, but really... the English is bad, in a finished game product which is supposed to be the professional and legitimate successor to a great franchise. Grammar is where the main mistakes are, but the mistakes are grating when you consider you're paying for a professional product. Using "is" instead of "are" and "them" instead of "it" where appropriate may seem a petty criticism, but my eyes get crossed and I have to reread the already-boring dialogue because somebody didn't do a decent proof-read of their script before release, and it's annoying. Some may not care, but it's still worth noting in a list of the shortfalls of the product.

There are glitches. Sadly, this is to be expected of most modern games, and I won't detail them. They are numerous, but the ones I discovered are relatively minor and akin to what you will find in most games shortly after release.

Overall it seems the company was looking to make a quick buck on a popular franchise, released a comic-sketch version of the mature and gritty mercenary game, and decided to call it a day. I wonder if the designers ever played the games, because some of the basic features left out were core to the overalal JA experience. For my money, this game wasn't worth it. As always, YMMV, but as a long-time fan of the series, I can't recommend this joke.

Note: this is written by a fanboi of the originals JA series. To the uninitiated it's a fair game that resembles the original series. Not sure whether it's worth the price tag, but it's a fun game, though clearly needs some polish. I give it thumbs up because it's a nice game to play, even if it's a long stretch from the original series.

For the fanboi-ish review: meh. This review won't be very positive. So this is supposed to be a fanbased remake of the original. Clearly it resembles the original in some ways. But it's actually the little and subtle things that make this game far from "like" the original. On top of that it feels unfinished, content seems missing, hints seem missing, achievements somewhat broken, but mainly it feels as if the story line was rushed in.

Note that in all this, I played on the default level, which feels very much like "easy", and I played in a save-game mode. For my playthrough that came down to a sector reload whenever I lost a soldier. Other damage is pretty irrelevant, at least in this game mode. Played on windows on a high end machine.

Some details.

The UI feels clunky. The game itself runs very smooth. This is a high end pc so I expect nothing less. However, the menu items, the quest list, the interaction all feels very laggy. Dragging items often need to be done twice. Feedback on actions, like reloading a merc from the map sometimes gives you immediate feedback, sometimes requires you to swap a gun around or something. Pressing forward or fast forward will start with an initial lag, really annoying. So generally, all the interface and interaction feels pretty bad, pretty unpolished.

Then there's interaction things that are weird, or maybe just different from the original series. It's not possible to select your entire squad with keys, only by mouse. The interface lag sometimes causes you to move your merc when you intended to attack an enemy, causing you to run straight toward your enemy with your sniper rifle. I'm sure it still hurts, but... Also, the old game had good inventory maintenance things, specifically view a sector inventory. Instead all loot (and dead bodies) disappear after you exit a sector. But it's also not possible to sort items in your inventory, only filter them by very high level categories. And whenever you move anything around from the fifth page of inventory, it refreshes the inventory and bumps you back to the first page. Combined with double dragging and general lag, makes that a bad experience. There seems to be a lot of low hanging fruit here and I keep wondering why it hasn't been picked up.

Game mechanics. One of the first things that annoyed me is how unfriendly the friendly fire system is. Because seriously, if you are standing behind some guy, certainly you won't shoot him while aiming for somebody way further away? Even worse, if you're aiming for some guy and there are one or two friendly mercs in between the target and you in a straight line, you're nearly guaranteed to hit them both. And if you were aiming for the head/legs, you'll hit your mercs there too, regardless of your stance. Ok your stance matters in that a standing merc will not hit a lower stanced merc. But if you're all proned, this still works. However, this works for the enemy as well. My best laugh was an enemy that was nearly dead, fired its last bullet, killed one of his friends trying to hit me, then kicked the bucket due to bleeding. Heh.

Bleeding is bugged. It makes sense to bleed every turn, but if you have an interupt, you'll also get a bleed tick. Get 4 interupts? Then also 4 bleed ticks.

I played most of the game with just four mercs with 90+ aim. Other characters were just mules and militia trainers. Aim and dex seem the only interesting properties for the four mercs. The rest is kinda irrelevant. More than four mercs just becomes a hassle in fights, managing them all. Especially with the aforementioned friendly fire, it's a pita. Four mercs can group together or ambush enemies.

The AI is terrible. Oh and bugged. It's terrible because as soon as you shoot a single bullet they'll come swarming for you. Nearly all enemies do this and near the end I just dropped down in a line of four, shot a single bullet at an enemy, and picked up anything that came towards me. Especially that elephant gun with head shots is godlike. The enemies should try to circle around a bit, flank you from different sides, remain stationary in their hideouts, stay hidden until they had a fair chance of hitting me, something like that you know? The AI is also bugged in that it sometimes doesn't seem to compute AP properly. So you'll get a system message that you can't do this action because there aren't enough hitpoints left (often right after an enemy changed stance). It's funny because at least it shows that the engine isn't cheating; same rules apply :) But really, the user shouldn't see these messages at all.

Being attacked in a sector is another thing. It's very unfair. You sometimes get like 10 seconds to round up your men and dig in before an enemy spots you. Without the ability to select all mercs in one key stroke, that gets a bit frantic. Especially since the game will reposition your men somewhere in the centre, randomly, so you can't really "prepare" for the "ambush" either. In that sense it's really an ambush, but in my opininon it's not the fair kind of ambush.

The militia is... different from the original series. So on the one hand you no longer see your friendly militia walk around. In fact, you won't see them at all. You won't fight with them (they get their own, text only, phase) and you can only train them in a linear time. This is weird because no matter how many mercs, or their experience in antyhing, you'll get your militia in a linear time. And once a sector has a certain number of militia, it's pretty much safe from hostiles. You can only lose militia by being attacked, and once you have the max (15?) you won't lose any militia during an attack. They'll become elite and that's it. The biggest danger is taking over a city on the front line and having to build up a buffer of militia before the enemy attacks again. It also means that having 5 militia means nothing as they'll not even put up a fight against 9 enemies. They'll die and you'll face 9 fully healthy enemies after they do.

So health. You don't actually see enemy health. Kind of annoying at times, but kind of realistic in a way so not a problem per se. You do get to see them bleed, but that's kind of irrelevant. You get a tip of how strong the enemy is, but very very poor tip (soldier, militia, elite). Your own health is irrelevant as long as you're not dead. The enemy AI does seem to pick on one target at a time. That can be annoying, but it's a good tactic and they should do this as it's the most efficient way to eliminate a squad fast. Once you conquer a sector you can usually take your time to heal up though. You don't need to patch up mercs before "resting". You can assign a doctor to speed things up, but your merc won't bleed to death if you don't apply a bandage, like it would in the originals. Eventually, your merc heals up and you can continue with the next. I felt little pressure, especially after settling in the beginning.

Another thing you can do is repair your stuff. However, you won't find (m)any repair kits until much later in the game. This is annoying since your stuff is going to wear down and you'll have _no_ way of repairing it until you acquire a new repair kit. There's no way to guide the repair merc on which items to repair first. Worn down guns never choke, they'll only perform worse or stop working entirely. So either your gun is gonna fire or it won't, there's no risk at all. Broken guns won't get fixed.

There's more. Morale is useless, no arbitrary shooting, no time lapse in free mode, no teachers. But Steam limits these reviews, so:

I'm a backer and I was surprised that Full Control are almost ready to release this.Key issues:- AI that can see through walls and behind their backs- Cannot merge ammo even in strategic screen (I had 5 boxes of .45, each with 1 bullet - shoot, reload, shoot, reload)- Stabbed through walls- Cannot leave a sector via the tactical screen- Floating guns/knives of non-visible enemies- Almost no environment loot-ables- Multiple save files (I got into an impossible situation and now have to scrap my game and start over. Not fun)- Confusing identical assets for very different things (e.g. .45 cal and .44 cal ammo)- Many many bugs, lack of polish (changing settings like pan speed requires restart, hitting 'escape' does not pause the game, no indicator when you going into realtime mode, horribly choppy visuals, inventory screen flashes when it comes up, crashes)

I have not played much of this game yet, but I have to say that it fails to live up to the legacy of Jagged Alliance 2 on every level. It's not really a bad game, but it feels like the "mobile version", not the full-fledged sequel. Would I recommend it? Well, no. If you are a fan of JA2, you will be disappointed. If you are new to the series, it is a misrepresentation of what the Jagged Alliance legacy is all about. Perhaps if you thought JA2 was tedious and you just want accessible and simplified turnbased combat, you might like it. But then I'd say you are what drives everything that is wrong with the game industry today, and you should stop playing games all together.

***EDIT***Disclaimber: If you think my playtime is too short to write a review (an understandable point), you can view this as a First Impression. I base my opinion around the comparison to Jagged Alliance 2 made by the developers themselves in their kickstarter pitch. JA2, a game that I have played for countless hours thoughout the years since the launch of the Tixa Prison Demo. The time needed to realize the simplification and laughable lack of features compared to that titan of the genre is about half of the time I played this game, the rest of my game time was put in to give the developers the benefit of doubt that it might pick up further down the line. I stopped playing when I just could not see a reason to sink more time into this instead of playing something less disappointing. More in-depth explenation of the factors that play in to my opinion can be found in the comments of this review./***EDIT****

I almost never don't recommend a game, but when a game promises a remake of one of my favourite games, Jagged Alliance 2 (or JA2 for short), of all time and does not deliver; I have to do it.

Be advised; It is not recommended in its current state. It is overpriced for the rushed state it is in. I will state some of the pros and cons:

Pros:

-Graphics are nice, improvement over the original. Sectors look good, as well as weather effects, mercs pictures and weapons look great.-Character Creation is added which is very good, I would have liked to have some sort of custom portraits (but that may be modded in in teh future)

Cons:

-Biggest con; The voice acting and quality of voices. They even added a merc with a computerised voice, appearantly a reward for a Backer during the Kickstarter Campaign. But although it gets explained ingame, the quality of that one (and the normal voices) is way below par. As FC has the license (and I can imagine also the original voices), they could have added the original JA2 voices.-Sloppy, boring interface; Minimalistic (with a capital "M")- Nothing like the original. Copying and updating the original interface would have heldped with immersion very much.-No laptop as in JA2-The shop NPC has no UI. No pictures of what you buy, nor an indication how much money you have left. You just have to click blindly until your money is gone and you cannot check ammo-requirements for certain guns, without going out of the shop menu.-Militia defending screen has been cut from the game, and now shows plain numbers. Militia are more useless than in JA2. Furthermore, you cannot assist in the defense of a sector together with militia, even when your mercs are in the same sector. The militiua get killed first, then your mercs can fight.-The whole game feels rushed, you can see that funding ran out. The whole game does not breather the atmosphere of the game it tried to remake; Jagged Alliance 2 and continues the trend of JA2 successor failures. All praise go to the original makers from Sirtech, who made a game which cannot be remade, not even in the current market!

So I do not recommended the game in its current state. You better wait for either the price to drop and/or until the modders from The Bear's Pit got their hands on it. They made JA2 even better with patch 1.13, so it is possible to improve JA2. Surely someone can make a true remake of the game, it is a shame Full Control didn't have the funding to take this the whole way. I am very disappointed in the state of the game and it really should be renamed into Jagged Alliance: Under Construction.

for now, at the day of release i decide to be still positive, since i´ve seen that Full Control, can and wants to achieve a good game. If they continue to improve the game after the release, as is their promise, they and the modder community still can make this a really good Jagged Alliance game.

For now the game is a good base, for greatness, but not a good Jagged Alliance imo. If they finish giving the game soul and heart, it can become one though.

So, if you buy the game (and want a good Jagged Alliance game, not just a nice tactical military game, which surely it is right now), do it for what it can become, not so much for what it is now.

This game is quiet nice, It started as a Kickstarter project and after release it was like a baby of the Jagged Alliance we love, Better and fresh graphics, better combat system. We miss a lot of soul and personality in this game but it couldnt make in time and cuz of the low budget. The patches after release gave us so many features. Respect for the Team. Hope to see some voice for npc's and all the other features like unlocking or trashing doors. But u guys know what we want. Keep it up with the good work

It's not on the level of a JA2 (or even JA1), but still it is a good game. You can mod it quite well (if you use windows - on Linux it's a different story). It's a solid game and if you like your strategy games - you should at least think of buying it.

Lovingly revived from the past. This game is all about the good old strategy and turn based combat without the dumbing down of for instance the new XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The developers are really good guys and are working hard to support and expand on the game experience.

Fair is fair and the game has improved a lot in the past couple months. Interface has improved; NPC stores were implemented; stealth, melee and weapon attachments were added. The game doesn't look nearly as unfinished as few months back... but in the end the big problems are not addressed and probably will not be as they seem to be a part of the design.

On the turn-based tactical level the game is pretty good actually. You could wish for more destructible environment or say high-grounds system, but in the end the game is enjoyable as it is...

The island map though is just all wrong...

Healing is too fast - in the original getting a merc wounded would put him/her of commision for days, in Flashback chances are they'll be fine by next morning... so there is litle incentive to run a clean mission, as long as merc still breathing by the end of the fight you'll be fine.

Weapons and equipment is too easy to come by making a equipment management a chore where it used to be a crucial considiration.

Money is too easy to get - despensing with the whole fund mamagement component.

Squad inventory means you no longer need to decide what to take and what to leave in the sector - grab eveything, no worries

Militia is useless even on the easy dificulty, you are probably better off just leaving sectors unguarded and recapturing them as needed (map travel times in Flashback seem to be shorten too so you'll get back in no time)

Mercs lost their personality and uniquness - they have voices and background stories but when you have to make decisions about team building, equipment or tactical use - there is no significant difference between Ivan and Grizzly, Magic and Fidel.

And then there are also more obvious problems. You still can't open/close doors, can't climb to the roof, CAN summon mercs out of thin air, and CAN take cover behind immovable bulletproof cows.

In the end the game is OK, more than OK in fact... but you are still better of playing Jagged Alliance 2.

***original review***

I am afraid I cannot recommend the game as it is now.

The game is a very passable squad-based turn-based tactics, and to be fair it came closer to the original than any other JA wannabes in the past 15 years, but...

It's like someone have tried to replicate your favorite dish. They figured out most of the ingredients right (team management, strategic map layer, exploration, turn-based tactical combat), but they never got the original recipe so take their best guess to the proportions and processes.

This shows up in a number of way, but first and foremost in the lack of polish. JA2 sported the incredible level of attention to the details and polish that was trademark of Sir-Tech... Flashback - lack of polish shows in everything from ability to summon merc out of thin air, to clunky interface, to counter intuitive advancement system, to NPC names like beta_thug, to when and what your mercs say, to lack of balance in both strategic level and squad management.

On top of that Flashback is literally unfinished game (several features are unavailable or unfinished)

While the game had "Early Access" sticker on I kept hoping that all those problem would be fixed... in theory there is still a chance (developers promise patches that will do just that)... but until then... I do not recommend paying for this game.

Bottom line: It's an OK game with great potential, but at the moment if you want JA experience you better of playing JA2 (especially with 1.13 patch)

This game in terms of gameplay is closer to JA1 than it is to JA2 or BIA. It reminded me more of a game called Antisquad but with a little more depth (but not in terms of difficulty). All in all not too bad effort but JA2 and Jagged Edge offer more interesting gameplay and tactical choices for now.

I can't recommend this game because it is so unfinished that it is more like alpha or beta stage than actual release. I really wanted this game to be good (Spent 25$ to Kickstarter) but now I have to admit it - this game is bad. Forget "Jagged Alliance" title and rename characters and then - all you have left is just bad turn-based shooter.3 / 10

Backed this game on Kickstarter, because I am a huge JA fan. However, this game does not come close at all. It is riddled with bugs, lacks a ton of features and made me regret I spent the 25 EUR on Kickstarter.

Don't buy in it's current state. Game is clearly not close to finished!